Acceptance study on application systems to improve situational incident management through bi-directional communication between citizens and decision-makers in emergencies and crises situations

Efficient hazard prevention and disaster control depend on situational awareness. Situational information is - among others - provided by citizens on the ground. Disaster managers are often reluctant to use such information on a large scale or in a systematic way for fear of being overwhelmed by information overload in a stressful crisis. New information technologies for crisis management are strongly dependent on the acceptance of the people using them and can only be successful as socio-technical systems. Therefore, 354 employees of public and private emergency operation centres as well as members of crisis management teams were asked to assess different information sharing technologies. 504 people from the public responded to an online survey about their willingness to use such technologies. The results indicate a high level of acceptance by both user groups for bi directional communication technologies for situation management and the improvement of situational awareness.